TESLA
Death Ray

Science Mysteries

A Weapon to End the War

Tesla inherited from his father a deep hatred of war.
Throughout his life, he sought a technological way to end warfare.
He thought that war could be converted into, "a mere spectacle of
machines."

In 1931 Tesla announced to reporters at a press conference that
he was on the verge of discovering an entirely new source of
energy. Asked to explain the nature of the power, he replied, "The
idea first came upon me as a tremendous shock... I can only say at
this time that it will come from an entirely new and unsuspected
source."

War clouds were again darkening Europe. On 11 July 1934 the
headline on the front page of the New York Times read, "TESLA, AT
78, BARES NEW 'DEATH BEAM.'" The article reported that the new
invention "will send concentrated beams of particles through the
free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a
fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 250 miles..."
Tesla stated that the death beam would make war impossible by
offering every country an "invisible Chinese wall."

The idea generated considerable interest and controversy. Tesla
went immediately to J. P. Morgan, Jr. in search of financing to
build a prototype of his invention. Morgan was unconvinced. Tesla
also attempted to deal directly with Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain of Great Britain. But when Chamberlain resigned upon
discovering that he had been out-maneuvered by Hitler at Munich,
interest in Tesla's anti-war weapon eventually collapsed.

By 1937 it was clear that war would soon break out in Europe.
Frustrated in his attempts to generate interest and financing for
his "peace beam," he sent an elaborate technical paper, including
diagrams, to a number of Allied nations including the United
States, Canada, England, France, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia.
Titled "New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy
Through Natural Media," the paper provided the first technical
description of what is today called a charged particle beam
weapon.

What set Tesla's proposal apart from the usual run of fantasy
"death rays" was a unique vacuum chamber with one end open to the
atmosphere. Tesla devised a unique vacuum seal by directing a
high-velocity air stream at the tip of his gun to maintain "high
vacua." The necessary pumping action would be accomplished with a
large Tesla turbine.

Of all the countries to receive Tesla's proposal, the greatest
interest came from the Soviet Union. In 1937 Tesla presented a
plan to the Amtorg Trading Corporation, an alleged Soviet arms
front in New York City. Two years later, in 1939, one stage of the
plan was tested in the USSR and Tesla received a check for
$25,000.

Tesla hoped that his invention would be used for purely
defensive purposes, and thus would become an anti-war machine. His
system required a series of power plants located along a country's
coast that would scan the skies in search of enemy aircraft. Since
the beam was projected in a straight line, it was only effective
for about 200 miles — the distance of the curvature of the earth.

Tesla also contemplated peacetime applications for his particle
beam, one being to transmit power without wires over long
distances. Another radical notion he proposed was to heat up
portions of the upper atmosphere to light the sky at night — a
man-made aurora borealis.

Whether Tesla's idea was ever taken seriously is still a mater
of conjecture. Most experts today consider his idea infeasible.
Though, his death beam bears an uncanny resemblance to the
charged-particle beam weapon developed by both the United States
and the Soviet Union during the cold war.

Nonetheless, Tesla's dream for a technological means to end war
seems as impossible now as it did when he proposed the idea in the
1930s.

About the Death Ray of Tesla

Also called the
"Peace Ray" and "teleforce," the account refers to Tesla's
macroscopic
particle beam projector, first mentioned publicly in the New
York Sun, July 10, 1934 [Tesla
Said, p.108]. The device, which was based upon a large
Van de Graaff generator of unique design and a special type of
open ended vacuum tube, comprised a system for the acceleration of
very small charged metallic particles to prodigiously high
velocity—about 48 times the speed of sound—according to Tesla.
The particles were projected out of the tube by means of
electro-static repulsion. As can be seen from Tesla's words
written in a letter to J.P. Morgan, Jr. on November 29, 1934 it
was intended for use in national defense.

"I
have made recent discoveries of inestimable value which are
referred in the marked passage of the clipping enclosed...
[possibly "Dr. Tesla Visions the End of Aircraft In War," Syracuse
Herald, October 21, 1934] The flying machine has completely
demoralized the world, so much that in some cities, as London and
Paris, people are in mortal fear from aerial bombing. The new
means I have perfected afford absolute protection against this and
other forms of attack."

The tube was designed to project a single row of highly charged
particles. According to Tesla there would be no dispersion
whatever, even at great distance. Since the cross section of the
carriers might be reduced to almost microscopic dimensions, an
immense concentration of energy, practically irrespective of
distance, could be attained.

In 1934 Tesla spoke
with an S. M. Kintner of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing
Company regarding further development of the particle-beam
device. There are two letters dated
April 5, 1934 and
April 7, 1934 that refer to these discussions.

Had Tesla's Death Ray devastated Tunguska?

The mechanism behind Tesla's death ray is not well understood. It was
apparently some sort of particle accelerator. Tesla said it was an outgrowth of
his magnifying transformer, which focused its energy output into a thin beam so
concentrated it would not scatter, even over huge distances. He promoted the
device as a purely defensive weapon, intended to knock down incoming attacks -
making the death ray the great-great grandfather of the Strategic Defense
Initiative.

It is not certain if Tesla ever used the death ray, or indeed if he even
succeeded in building one. But the following is the often-related story of what
happened one night in 1908 when Tesla tested the foreboding weapon.

At the time, Robert Peary was making his second attempt to reach the North
Pole. Cryptically, Tesla had notified the expedition that he would be trying to
contact them somehow. They were to report to him the details of anything unusual
they might witness on the open tundra. On the evening of June 30, accompanied by
his associate George Scherff atop Wardenclyffe tower, Tesla aimed his death ray
across the Atlantic towards the arctic, to a spot which he calculated was west
of the Peary expedition.

Tesla switched on the device. At first, it was hard to tell if it was even
working. Its extremity emitted a dim light that was barely visible. Then an owl
flew from its perch on the tower's pinnacle, soaring into the path of the beam.
The bird disintegrated instantly.

That concluded the test. Tesla watched the newspapers and sent telegrams to
Peary in hopes of confirming the death ray's effectiveness. Nothing turned up.
Tesla was ready to admit failure when news came of a strange event in Siberia.

On June 30, a massive explosion had devastated Tunguska, a remote area in the
Siberian wilderness. Five hundred thousand square acres of land had been
instantly destroyed. Equivalent to ten to fifteen megatons of TNT, the Tunguska
incident is the most powerful explosion to have occurred in human history -- not
even subsequent thermonuclear detonations have surpassed it. The explosion was
audible from 620 miles away. Scientists believe it was caused by either a
meteorite or a fragment of a comet, although no obvious impact site or mineral
remnants of such an object were ever found.

Nikola Tesla had a different explanation. It was plain that his death ray had
overshot its intended target and destroyed Tunguska. He was thankful beyond
measure that the explosion had - miraculously - killed no one. Tesla dismantled
the death ray at once, deeming it too dangerous to remain in existence.

Posted by Alan Taylor on September 02, 1998

I'm open to the suggestion that the Tunguska blast
was caused by Tesla misfiring his death ray, but
there's one small problem with the theory.
If the
blast was 15 megatons, where did he get the
energy?

Thermodynamics tells us that you won't get
more energy out than you put in... and you have
to burn a lot of coal to get 15 megatons worth of
energy out of the generators common in Tesla's
time. IF Tesla caused the Tunguska Blast,
THEN one of these three hypotheses must be true:

The fundamental laws of Termodynamics are wrong, or at least
flawed.

Tesla burned a hell of a lot of coal and
stored the energy through some capacitative effect
in his Wydencliffe apparatus, possibly over days
or weeks.

Tesla's device does not actually cause the
explosion, but artificially catalyzes another
(even higher-energy) phenomenon. There is
simple precedent for this hypothesis - just
think of how much energy a gallon of gasoline
releases when you apply a simple spark.

Let's ignore (1) for the moment because refuting
thermodynamics is a much larger issue than
proving that Tesla built a working 'death ray'.

(2) could potentially be proven through historic
records, if anyone can find out how much fuel was
delivered to Wydencliffe in 1908. I'd wager that
all the fuel ever burned at the facility would not
generate 15 megatons-equivalent of electrical
energy, even with a very efficient power plant.

That leaves (3). Any takers?

Other notes: I read somewhere that the Wydencliffe
facility was NOT dismantled after the 1908
experiments, but rather that it was signed over to
a hotel in NYC to settly for Tesla's unpaid bills.
It was dynamited almost a decade later to recover
the scrap metal costs. The important 'black boxes'
may already have been removed, but it is possible
that Tesla did not 'immediately dismantle'
Wydencliffe, as is claimed in this article. Again,
this is something that could be supported by
research into the public records for the state of
New York.

Finally, Tesla was also researching broadcast
power, using the earth itself as a transmission
system. Is it possible that his 'death ray' was
not a particle-beam style device, but a kind of
capacitor that could selectively and explosively
discharge on the earth's surface? It wouldn't
explain anything, but it would be important for
anyone seeking to duplicate the experiment to know
in what direction Tesla had been heading when he
allegedly blew up Tunguska...

Comments are welcomed and desired. I have only
a layman's interest in the subject, so bear with
me, please.

Posted by Phil Nadeau on February 24, 1999

I have been dabbling in Tesla coils for a while and also reading about Nikola
Tesla. He was a man without equal. Reading about his earthquake machine, it
seems to me that he had found a way to get around common phyics, power in =
power out. With his machine, he could move buildings over 1/4 mile away using a
small air compressor and a piston in a cylinder through resonance. Why could'nt
he apply these same ideas to his 'Death Ray',which would focus all the energy
from his Wardenclyffe facility at one point, picking up energy from the earth
along the way.
My question is: How could you aim such a device?
Comments?

In a cursory surf of the web, I've not found primary eyewitness accounts of
Tesla's Wardenclyffe test, nor secondary news accounts of the day; tertiary
sources abound, but only the message I reply to here and
a Parascope's Tesla page
provide even a qualitative idea of the time, given in both as "the evening of
June 30". (The two accounts, in fact, appear to be identical.)

Published reports give
7:17 am, June 30, 1908,
local Tunguska time (00:17 GMT) for the event. This is consistent with
seismic records of the event,
in which the GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) for the earliest seismic arrival at the
Irkutsk observatory is given as 00:18.8. (Irkutsk is on the SW shore of Lake
Baikal at about 52.25 deg N, 104.3 deg E [Richter, Elementary Seismology,
p 707], about 1100 km SSE of the Tunguska site at 61 deg N, 101.3 deg E.
[Richter, p 157].)

Now, Tesla's Long Island facility is -5 hours from GMT, or 12 hours earlier
than Tunguska time. In other words, the Tunguska event occured at about 7:17 pm,
June 29, Long Island time, about one day before the time given in web
accounts of Tesla's Wardenclyffe experiment.

So, if the qualitative web accounts of Tesla's experiment are trustworthy,
Tesla had nothing to do with Tunguska. If anybody can provide eyewitness
accounts of Tesla's activities, this could be nailed down, one way or another.

Follow up from Joe Wilson:
The Parascope account is sensationalized to say the least. Their use of the date
"June 30th" is not arrived at by any documented evidence. The credible evidence
suggests that Tesla was periodically conducting high-power experiments at
Wardenclyffe during mid 1908, but "nailing it down" precisely is presently very
difficult, because Teslas notes from the period are lost!!
Oliver Nichelson first proposed a Tesla/Tunguska link based on compelling
circumstantial evidence. This evidence is not adequately reflected in any of the
tabloid-style fictionalized accounts, that get quoted and re-quoted. People
don't like scientific arguments based on circumstantial evidence, so they
sometimes lie to fill gaps in their knowledge.
The true evidence is of a subtler form, residing in the nature of the Tunguska
Blast & Wardenclyffe, and Tesla's demonstrated interest in the journeys of Peary.
Writings which make extravagant claims about non-existent first-hand accounts
only serve to arouse the skepticism of otherwise open-minded people. There may
in fact be as much circumstantial evidence for a Tesla/Tunguska link, as there
is for many widely accepted scientific theories. Some people would just dismiss
the idea out of hand, but you can't please everyone.

I strongly believe that these nutters have re-discovered Tesla's weapons of
distruction. Such a test might have taken place on 28 May 1993 close to the
Banjawarn sheep station - NW of Perth, Australia. The event registered 3.7 on
the Richter scale and was assumed to have been the first ever recorded quake in
that part of Australia.

Initially the tremor was assumed to be the result of a meteorite impact (such
as Tunguska). After gathering detailed data and speaking to the locals evidence
suggested a man-made event.

Eyewitnesses reported sighting a fireball trailing across the sky just
minutes before the subsequent tremor. This was followed by a bright blue flash
and shortly afterwards, by an earth tremor measuring 3.7 on the Richter scale.

Shortly following this a "large hemisphere of orange light, lined with a
silverish glow, rose above the apparent blast site." Extraordinarily, the dome
of light remained in place for two hours, and then rapidly vanished like
"someone turning off a switch.

I personally believe that this was probably the first time since 1908, that
the full power of Tesla's death ray had been unleashed.

The Aum cult are also thought to have re-created Tesla's eathquake machine.
The cult's leader so accurately predicted the Kobe disaster 8 days before the
event. Kobe was automatically assumed to be a terrible natural disaster but I
bet Aum could tell you otherwise.

Tesla weapons of this distructive power make nukes look like pellet guns. If
such technology is in the hands of these maniacs then the world has something
really to worry about.

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